Level-5-Tales-of-Mistery-and-Imagination-Penguin-Readers

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Tales of Mystery
and Imagination
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Level 5
Retold by Roland John
Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter
Pearson Education Limited
Edinburgh Gate, Harlow,
Essex CM20 2JE, England
and Associated Companies throughout the world.
ISBN 0 582 498058
First published in the Longman Simplified English Series 1964
First published in Longman Fiction 1993
This edition first published 2001
NEW EDITION
Copyright © Penguin Books Ltd 2001
Typeset by Pantek Arts Ltd, Maidstone, Kent
Set in 11/14pt Bembo
Printed in Spain by Mateu Cromo, S.A. Pinto (Madrid)
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the Publishers.
Published by Pearson Education Limited in association with
Penguin Books Ltd, both companies being subsidiaries of Pearson Pic
For a complete list of the titles available in the Penguin Readers series please write to your local
Pearson Education office or to: Marketing Department, Penguin Longman Publishing,
5 Bentinck Street, London, W1M 5RN.
Contents
page
Introduction
v
William Wilson
1
The Gold-Bug
10
The Fall of the House of Usher
25
The Red Death
34
The
Barrel
of
Amontillado
38
The Whirlpool
43
The Pit and the Pendulum
53
The Stolen Letter
62
Metzengerstein
73
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
79
Activities
100
Introduction
'You have won and I have lost. But, from now on you too are dead ...
You existed in me — and this body is your own. See how completely you
have, through my death, murdered yourself.'
The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe are often strange, wild and
highly imaginative. Many of them examine in an extremely
detailed way the dark side of human existence. In his time, Poe
was a very original writer. His stories communicate a world of
terror that comes straight from the depths of his own troubled
mind.
'William Wilson' (1839) is set in England, where Poe also went
to school. It is a disturbing story about the struggle between the
good and bad sides of a young man's character.
'The Gold-Bug' (1843) is one of Poe's most popular stories,
selling over 300,000 copies in its first year. The story shows how
clear thinking can make sense of things we do not at first
understand. In this case, the clear thinking leads to the discovery
of immense treasures.
Another strange and very frightening story is 'The Fall of the
House of Usher' (1839).The character Roderick Usher has often
been compared with Poe himself; both lived in continual fear of
death and kept apart from human company.
Two more shocking stories in which death claims victory are
'The Red Death' (1842) and 'The Barrel of Amontillado' (1846).
'The Whirlpool' (1841) is an adventure story set on the
Norwegian coast, in which the main character experiences
terrible fear and lives to tell the tale.
'The Pit and the Pendulum' (1843) describes in horrible detail
the cruelty of human beings to each other, and examines fear and
hopelessness at the point of death.
v
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